Zelda's Inferno exercise: near-death experience

Posted on: Sun, 10/24/2010 - 21:07 By: Tom Swiss

Zelda's Inferno exercise: write about a near-death experience

I suppose the closest I've come to death is about 18 inches. That's my guess at the distance I avoided the head-on collision at highway speed.

Driving to work one morning, I-70 west, suddenly crashing spinning through the bushy median another car, coming right toward me. Swung to the right, lucky there was no car there, brain too full of not dying to realize I how close to dying I was at the moment, strangely calm.

Having dodged disaster by a foot and a half, I pulled over, now worried about the other driver -- what had happened to him? How had he gone from commuter to deadly projectile? Passed out at the wheel? Heart attack, stroke? No, I saw, as I ran back toward his car, he was stepping out, fully conscious. "Are you ok?" I yelled.

"Yeah, fine."

"What happened?"

"Oh, I just lost control," he said, got back in his car, and drove off...leaving my Toyota stuck in the mud, where a few minutes later a state cop came by and harassed me, until a guy with a pickup truck stopped and pulled me out. Which is, I suppose, a different story, not one about the nearness and casualness of death.